Today, at the company’s planned media event, social networking giant Facebook took the wraps off of its new communication service. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, noted that the new system aims to be seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal, and short… but not email.

The new service will: provide messaging across all of the different ways people communicate (SMS, email, IM, SMS), a conversation history for reference and archiving, and a social inbox to aggregate all the messages you really care about.

The scenario presented is this: someone sends you an email that is displayed on Facebook as a chat window (the new system is being described as “very IM like”), when you reply to this message an email is sent back to your conversation partner. If you happen to be away from your computer when they reply, you can get a push email notification via the mobile Facebook application or via SMS (the company noted that a new iOS Facebook app will be launching today) and respond from there. The idea is to keep a permanent, running history of conversations with the people you care about while making digital communication feel like an actual, face-to-face conversation. “Your conversations are no longer locked in a phone or a particular email service,” said Facebook engineer Andrew Bozworth. “The days of typing “g2g” and “brb” are over.”

Users of Facebook will be given the opportunity to have a @facebook.com email address that matches the public user-name (facebok.com/public-useranme) that they’ve picked; Facebook employees will use the new fb.com domain purchased from the Farm Bureau. Down the road, the new service will support XMPP, IMAP, and several other open protocols to will allow users to access their Facebook messages however they want.

The company will be rolling out the new service slowly over the first few months; initial testers will be part of an invite system similar to the one used by Gmail early on.

http://www.facebook.com/people/William-Diaz/100000639956723 William Diaz

Sooo….Facebook rehashed “Universal Inbox” that Google, Helio, Apple, BlackBerry and all the other companies have?

WOW MARK YOU ARE THE GREATEST 20 SOMETHING YEAR OLD CEO EVER!! — NOT!

Booboolala2000

So. Will I now need to block other content in my facebook settings abyss? I don’t want them to gain access to my email It sms. Or by sms are they referring to facebook chat?
And on a sidenote has anyone tried” path” in the apple app store? About to check it out on my ipod touch, and it is coming to android soon too.
Not so impressed as to this announcement from facebook yet, maybe if you were allowed to export contacts if the contact agreed.

Jakorpio

Maybe google wave done right

Booboolala2000

Google Wave was not an sms feature. It was more of a real time meeting hub. You could have multiple users in the same “wave” working on a project from different places at the same time. You may be speaking of Buzz? Wave was much more than this.

Anonymous

Their chat barely works as it is. I would never rely on them for email anyway.

http://www.facebook.com/Ryandeen Ryan Deen

Is this why FB has avoided including push notifications on the Android app?

Booboolala2000

So the sms feature is like google voice. Not lost between devices? Ok. It does seem to be a sort of beta version of a future email system.

Anonymous

Seems pretty lame if you ask me. Facebook just can’t figure out a way to make money off the web through ads like Google has. Their image keeps taking a beating which means fewer adopters of their new features.

http://twitter.com/simoncabron Simon Cabron

If facebook were a public company, their stock would’ve taken a nose dive today

Jokernj

So no update to the Android app? What happened to parity?

Anonymous

My thoughts exactly. As far as I’m concerned, the Android Facebook app is going to be inferior until there is literally no need to go to the Facebook website if I’m using the app.

Anyone who has used the app for Android knows that this is not the case, and it is a continual source of disappointment. I know Google dicked you guys by buying out the company that created the app in the first place, but you guys are worth a bajillion dollars. Spend a couple bucks and get some people working overtime to get the Android version to match the iOS version. In case you haven’t noticed, Zucky the Zuck… there are a lot of us.

Iceman

I’m so glad I eliminated my facebook account. What a colossal waste of time! There is a real life outside of facebook I discovered. My real friends remember my birthday without facebook telling them; and if they want, they can actually pick up the phone and talk to me, or heaven forbid, talk to me face to face. :)

http://www.facebook.com/Ryandeen Ryan Deen

I can be your wingman any day….

Dale

Iceman,

I share your sentiments. Real life with real, living & breathing friends, beats the pseudo-life of Facebook !

I don’t have a Facebook account…Never did, never will !

Will

Highly personal messages being inadvertently posted to public walls, resulting is a massive backlash in 3…2…1…